


Loss of Existence

by Skyler10



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, Engagement, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Miscarriage, Unplanned Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-13
Updated: 2016-03-13
Packaged: 2018-05-26 09:35:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,668
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6233518
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Skyler10/pseuds/Skyler10
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Drowning in an ocean of unexpected grief, Rose struggles to find a way to tell Tentoo about their miscarriage.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Loss of Existence

**Author's Note:**

> Strong angst-warning (and, obviously, miscarriage trigger warning) with this one. I never planned to write another one of these after “Rose Comes Home,” but for reasons both various and personal, this kind of wrote itself.

In all the time he’s known her, the Doctor has never heard Rose’s voice sound like this – what could only be described as hysterical. She’s sobbing and sputtering out little phrases he can’t decipher, and his one human heart is going to gallop right out of his chest if she doesn’t calm down enough to tell him what’s wrong.

He grips the phone in one hand, the steering wheel with the other.

“Please come home,” she begs with a whimper that cuts to his core.

“I am, love. I’m on my way,” he grits out, trying to be patient. “Try one more time, Rose. Tell me what’s happened.”

“No… no. I’ll tell you when you get here. I want to tell you in person.” She’s calming now. She exhales a puff of air. _Good, good, she’s breathing deeply. That’s a good sign._

“But you’re alright?” he checks again, just to make sure she wasn’t lying before, at the start of this conversation.

“Yeah, told you. I’m... I’m fine.” She sounds unsure. But she means she isn’t in danger and that’s a huge relief considering their line of work.

She had taken the day off anyway, citing a particularly bad case of cramps and a stomachache. _“Serves me right,”_ she had told him that morning. _“Karma. I got my wish that I wouldn’t start on time before the delegates’ meeting and now that that’s over, I get it worse than ever.”_

Despite being, well, a _doctor,_ there were some things he didn’t ask too many questions about, and his fiancée’s cycle was one of those things. So he left her that morning with a cuppa, a kiss, and a promise to keep his mobile on if she needed him.

And apparently, she did. He was already on his way out of the door for the day, just shrugging out of his lab coat, when he got her call.

Now, he knew three things: 1. she wasn’t in danger, 2. no one they knew was in danger, 3. he needed to come home immediately. Oh, and 4. his brave, strong Rose, the Bad Wolf, his entire universe, was trying desperately to control her sobbing as she pleaded with him to just talk to her, to stay on the line until he got home, that she just needed to hear his voice.

* * *

 

She pulled herself together enough to be in the final, sniffling stages of her breakdown by the time he finally opened the front door to their flat. She launched herself into his arms and held him tightly. She had no idea how she was going to break this news to him, but now that she had made a bloody fool of herself, there was no going back or pretending.

“Rose.” He held her close, stroking his hands through her hair as she shuddered against him.

“C’mere.” Her voice was hoarse as she led him further inside to sit next to her on the couch.

“Tell me, please. I’m coming up with a million terrible things that can’t possibly be as bad as whatever has done this to you.” His eyes were at once wide with worry and soft with loving compassion. She couldn’t deny him any longer. This was his pain too, after all, even though he didn’t yet know it.

“You know how I wasn’t feeling well this morning?” She swallowed and looked down at their interlocked hands.

“Yeah?” he prompted, literally on the edge of the seat.

“It… got worse. And it wasn’t, the blood wasn’t… normal.” She squeezed her eyes shut as she continued. “So I called Martha’s clinic. She wasn’t there, but her partner was. They had an opening this afternoon so they were able to get me in on short notice.”

“You went to the doctor? Rose, why didn’t you tell me?” The concern on his face shamed her and she hadn’t even told him the whole story. She really should have at least sent him a heads-up text, but she didn’t know then what she knew now.

“I didn’t think it was a big deal, just out of the ordinary. But Dr. Wilson wanted to run some tests just in case.”

The tension in his jaw was becoming tighter the longer she delayed the news. She gathered her courage. He needed to know. Deserved to know. Even if she hadn’t completely lost it and called him as soon as she got home from hearing the news herself.

“Doctor,” she began weakly. “I was… we were… I had a miscarriage.”

“What?” he breathed, the word little more than a vocalized puff of air leaving his open lips.

“I didn’t know until... I didn’t _know_!” Her voice broke as the unfairness of it all raged within her. Grief swept up on her, an unexpected tidal wave she thought had receded for the time being. “I didn’t even know I was pregnant. And now it’s gone.”

She crumpled into his arms as he pulled her close.

“We were going to have a baby,” he murmured and kissed her hair.

“Mmhm,” she confirmed, nodding against him. “But now we’re not.”

Hot tears rolled heavily down her cheeks, different than the panicked sobs of their phone conversation. These were no longer tears of shock, but of deep loss. Loss she didn’t know she could feel for a life she hadn’t known existed until it was gone.

“What if we can’t?” She finally revealed her fear. “But we know it isn’t because of the metacrisis or something. You could get me pregnant just fine. It’s _me_.”

“No, Rose, don’t talk like that.” He stroked her back in tender motions, up and down.

“But it’s true!” She sat up and faced him as boldly as she could in the moment, face red and puffy and wet. “What if something happened to me? Maybe when I was trying to find you with the cannon? What if it did something to me? Or Bad Wolf or who knows, any of the alien planets and things we’ve done. I never thought, never questioned-”

“You know I wouldn’t have put you at risk like that,” he countered. “Unfortunately, there’s no way we can know about what all Bad Wolf did to you, or the dimension cannon for that matter. Not until I have the chance to acquire some medical equipment with the TARDIS when she’s ready for travel.”

“You know what’s weird?” she confessed with fingers twisted in his shirt. “I didn’t even know I wanted kids, not for sure and definitely not this much, not until it happened.”

“Well, this is the first time we’ve really talked about it. Seriously, I mean.”

“Yeah,” she sighed, then gave him a rueful hint of a smile. “Besides. Haven’t even had the wedding yet. Can you imagine Mum’s face if I told her I was gonna be pregnant on my wedding day?”

“Oh, you’d hardly be showing, even by then.” He humored her with this train of thought to steer her away from the darker parts of this conversation.

“Was thinking more about the dress not fitting after all that with the alterations.”

“Couldn’t drink ourselves silly at the reception either. Which would be a shame because I have a delicious banana cocktail for you to try.”

Their feeble, forced humor fell silent as they held each other. The room darkened with the red-orange sunset out the sliding glass doors to the balcony. It made Rose feel sick just watching it.

“Doctor?”

“Yes, love?”

“I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

“For losing our baby.”

The words were so vulnerable, so quiet, she wondered if he had even heard her. But after a moment, he answered, voice so strong and velvety smooth that it flooded her with love just to hear it.

“I want you to listen to me, Rose.” He cupped her cheek and met her reddened eyes with his own. “This was not your fault. Dr. Wilson told you this was normal, right? That it happens to so many couples?”

“Yeah.”

“If you won’t believe me, believe them. Chances are there’s nothing wrong with you, with us. It was our first, plus we had a very stressful month with the delegates coming to Torchwood.”

“Which meant we weren’t eating well, or sleeping, and we did take them out for drinks a few times…” She listed off all the reassurances and possible reasons the nurse had given her. It was all speculation, of course. According to 21st century medicine, she was as healthy as any 20-something female. More so, since her job involved plenty of running. So it was easy to blame it on the little ordinary things.

“Yes, exactly. When we’re ready, when we try for a baby on purpose,” he paused and the significance of what he was saying made her heart skip a beat. “We’ll be prepared. Ok? I’ll take you to the best obstetricians in the galaxy, and if we need to, we’ll use all the resources time and space can give us to do this right.”

“Ok.” She couldn’t help but smile at his devotion to her and the promise of a future family with him.

She shared with him more details of the medical side of things. He answered her questions where he could. After a while, the silence embraced them once more. The returning wave of grief surged forward, as if on cue.

“Promise me something, yeah?” she asked.

“What’s that?”

“We won’t forget this one. No matter how many we have in the future. We will never forget this baby.”

“I promise.” His reverence and raw pain were a heavy combination in her ear. He swallowed and added, “Our first. Our first little one.”

That he was mourning, not just with her in empathy, but as a father… The realization tore her to shreds while simultaneously healing her a little with the comfort that she wasn’t alone, that he was right there with her in the darkness. They would weather this just as they did everything in life:

Together.

 


End file.
